I personally don't find this easier to read, but that is only because I am not used to it. The important thing to remember is that consistency is the key in these matters. Make sure that whatever style you choose is the one and only style used for the entire project.

It's easier to comment out, but I'd rather go for readability - Using a column layout like the one below is a bit awkward while the code is changing a lot, but it's very comfortable to get an overview:

You would use this column layout and still place separators first.
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JeffOJun 19 '09 at 14:21

When separators are in front (commas in particular), they form their own column -- and that makes it easy to avoid missing comma problems, missing ON clause problems, and so on.
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Philip KelleyJun 25 '09 at 21:02

Good point on the first item. I would hope commenting out the line would change the meaning. Your example is more likely to create a syntax error if one of the lines were commented out.
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JeffOJun 19 '09 at 14:28

1

The point is, you can never avoid these oddities - and usually you'll create syntax errors (thankfully). But if you have a lot of unbracketed uses of ANDs and ORs (relying on syntax rules), and you comment out a line, you can suddenly end up with a far more restrictive, or far more lax, WHERE clause.
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Damien_The_UnbelieverJun 19 '09 at 17:30

We found having everything lined up in columns made queries more easily read, especially when you've got a number of SQL statements in PL/SQL. The SQL stood out neatly from the surrounding procedural code.